Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-196890 discloses a method of detecting a face image area contained in an input image and performing an image conversion (image correction) in such a manner that the average density of the detected face image will fall within a predetermined target density range.
Although the density of the face image area can be corrected to a density within the target density range using the method described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-196890, the densities of other types of important subjects, such as blue sky or a sunset scene, cannot be corrected to a desired density.